This study sought to answer, “Does agriculture- based autonomous adaptation strategies improve the resilience of rice farming households in Pangasinan and Tarlac, Philippines?” The discussion presented in this paper highlights the implications of the study’s key results on crafting programs and policies that can increase rice farmers resiliency against climate- related hazards. Policy directions that could be identified from the synthesis can pave the way for a more targeted development and dissemination of agro-based adaptation strategies.
One of the limitations of the study includes the small sample size. Future similar studies may consider bigger samples for wider assessment of vulnerability to hazards and poverty. Despite this limitation, the study has shown significant results within the acceptable sampling frame and methodological design that can provide insights into policy and program reforms.
This study focused on agriculture-based adaptation strategies. The household survey showed that the most common response to drought among the surveyed rice farmers was shifting of planting dates and crop diversification. Notably, adoption of new rice varieties was also a preferred strategy against drought.
Households who were highly vulnerable to expected poverty were also found to employ more adaptation strategies against drought. This observation, along with the fact that experiencing drought is the primary determinant of using agriculture-based adaptation strategies, point to a high degree of rationality among farmers in their decision to self-insure against drought.
Choice of adaptation strategy also varied by size of landholdings and gender dominance in household decision making. Adoption of new rice varieties as an adaptation strategy were more common among medium and marginal landed rice farmers. Therefore, varietal improvement programs must consider resiliency and social equity. Introduction of stress- tolerant modern rice varieties can be effective,
acceptable, and equitable planned adaptation strategy to reduce vulnerability against drought. The literature further supports the importance of drought-tolerant varieties or technologies, in general, to ease the effects of the hazard.
Dominance in household decision-making was also seen to be related to the choice of adaptation strategy.
Qualitative analysis showed that if the husband is the dominant decision maker in both the agricultural and non-agricultural decision-making spheres, shifting of planting dates was the preferred adaptation strategy.
On the other hand, wife dominance in household decision-making would prefer crop diversification and establishment of water storage facilities as adaptation strategy. The differences in preferred strategies imply the need to consider women’s preferences in designing adaptation strategies for them to be acceptable.
Enhancing the role of women and ensuring their participation in agricultural decision-making and programs can also be part of complementary support schemes to increase resilience of households.
Use of agriculture-based adaptation strategies were found to be constrained mostly by information. The often-cited reason by respondents for non-adaptation was the lack of information on adaptation strategies and on the long-term climate conditions. The probit regression results showed that visits of extension agents reduce the likelihood of employing agriculture- based adaptation strategies. It can be surmised that extension agents’ orientation is still anchored on the traditional objective of enhancing farm production.
There is a need to reorient and equip extension agents so they can perform a wider role in increasing farmer resiliency amidst climate change. Better access to short- and long-term weather and climate information can be an important starting point. Building capacity of extension agents to interpret and identify weather and climate knowledge products that are available is also essential. As the preferred adaptation strategies of rice farmers are shifting of planting dates and crop diversification, processing these weather and climate information into adaptive crop calendars and cropping patterns would also improve the advising capacity of extension agents.
Vulnerability assessment through the use of the Vulnerability to Expected Poverty (VEP) was also conducted in this study. While the qualitative analysis on adaptation choices yielded distinct trends, the trends in VEP and its association with different driving factors were less discernible. Hence, deeper insights were more readily obtained through the Tobit regression on the determinants of the VEP or the Vulnerability Index. Improvements in the VI were found to be associated with the household’s
wealth level as proxied or captured by the size of his landholdings and the type of housing materials. In particular, farmers with larger landholdings and with houses built with more permanent materials had lower VI levels.
Similar to the adaptation choice analysis, wife’s dominance in both the agricultural and non-agricultural decision-making reduced households VI. However, households headed by females were associated with higher VI or are more vulnerable to expected poverty. This may be due to conditions that women in the study sites had no access to work outside of the farm and the house. While greater participation of women inside the household reduces the household’s vulnerability to expected poverty, however, limited economic opportunities outside of the household may reducing their participation. Enhancing the role of women in income diversification and making agricultural decisions can therefore enhance the resiliency of households. They should be offered equal opportunities to attend agricultural training and to have access to livelihood projects that can contribute to household income diversification.
The impact of climate-related hazards and the effectiveness of agriculture-based adaptation strategies are related to the nature of the hazards.
Study results showed that drought, because of its intermittent or infrequent but extreme nature, had no effect on the vulnerability of the households to expected poverty. Households have time to recover in between these infrequent drought events. On the other hand, results showed that flooding, which affects crop production, increases the vulnerability of households to expected poverty. In contrast to drought, floods are frequent extreme events. Therefore, rice farming households are more prone to poverty brought about by floods. Surprisingly, adaptation strategies aimed at mitigating the impacts of drought also mitigated the impacts of floods. Thus, agriculture-based adaptation strategies increase resiliency of households in the two study areas, but not for drought events. Furthermore, these adaptation strategies make rice farmers resilient to multiple climate-related hazards.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the support provided by the local government units that allowed the team to conduct the study in selected municipalities and villages in Tarlac and Pangasinan.
This study was also supported by the Consortium for Unfavorable Rice Environments (CURE) project with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
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